This is me at the end of the day, a hot mess, hanging on for dear life. Or, alternately, a sloth at the Bronx Zoo. Your choice.

For years now, I have wanted to stop using screens in the evening, at least some of the time. I’ve always been a little jealous of married friends who casually say, “Oh, we don’t really watch TV together.”

But it is our default, after we get the kids to bed. We flop on the sofa in the living room, after both of us have worked hard all day. Then, we turn on the TV and watch something  together. We’ve struggled to  choose something to watch, even more so lately. A lot of the stuff the Chaplain would normally pick is just too cerebral for me to try to follow after I’m brain dead (NOVA, for instance? Fascinating, but I’m just too burnt to follow it.) The things I would choose are too girly (PBS’s new version of Little Women, for instance. Ah-mazing. But probably not of interest to the Chaplain).

So we were stuck in this rut where we would watch something we both were kind of ok with, but neither of us loved it. And I would trudge up to bed afterward feeling like I had wasted an hour (or two). This past fall, we got a little better. Instead of binge watching into a second episode when a show ended at a cliff hanger, we would pause for a moment for the adrenaline to wear off and we would realize we were actually tired and would just turn it off and go to bed.

I won’t even go into the mindless snacking involved in this activity.

And regardless of what we watched (or ate), I would feel like we were compromising, when maybe there was a better way.

Then this past Saturday happened. I was exhausted. I had spent the entire day with people. I had far exceeded my social capital. At around eight o’clock, I had a conversation with the Chaplain that went like this: “I need to go to bed.” And he responded, “I’m going to go downstairs and chill for a bit.” We went back and forth with some version of that call and response about three times.

The Chaplain and I traditionally go to bed at the same time. This can present a problem when one of us is still wound up while the other is crashing. Usually, the person who is wound up is me after a long day with the kids, and often, the Chaplain will suffer downstairs with me, waiting for me to settle down.

But from time to time, the Chaplain is the one who needs some time to wind down. Sometimes I will go to bed alone, but that night, I was so beyond exhausted. I heard him say he was going downstairs, and instead of clarifying that I would stay upstairs and go to bed, since I didn’t hear him acknowledging my attempts at communicating my evening plans, I felt like I needed to go downstairs.

It was a false need. I was too tired to think. But I went downstairs. And then I spent two hours staring at my laptop, next to the Chaplain on his laptop. I did a couple of blog things that took 14 times longer than they needed to because I was tired, and in between read news and thought pieces, which was a huge mistake.

By the time we headed upstairs close to eleven, I more exhausted and overstimulated, and upset over the articles I had read. I lay in bed, crying, because I was so tired and now my mind was full of current events instead of ready to sleep.

The Chaplain gets the credit here: he suggested we talk about it.

We came up with a plan. We went radical. We decided not to do any night-time screen time for a week. Instead, we would go to bed early and read.

The first night was Sunday. We got the kids to bed on time. When I went up to tuck everyone in, I found wet towels and bathing suits on the floor, and stepped on more than a few Legos. Please note, we did NOT take the kids swimming that day: They instead had taken it upon themselves to take a shower in their bathing suits upon finding out we weren’t taking them to the lake.

We had felt guilty about not taking them, and they had been begging all day. Yet there never felt like a time when we thought, “Yes! It’s a beautiful day! Let’s go to the lake.” Because we were being constantly pestered about it. You know, when your kids try to make you feel terrible about not doing something fun with them or taking them somewhere, and they aren’t holding up their end of the bargain either?

There was frustration, anger, and disappointment on all sides. It was a long, unsatisfactory day. I was not ready to go to bed at all.

Plus, it had been a beautiful day. I’d spent barely any time outside. So I asked the Chaplain if he minded if we went for a walk before we went upstairs. Technically, it would be breaking the rules of our radical Go To Bed Early Plan. But he agreed we should go.

We settled One in charge, and headed out the door.

I was walking fast. I was mad. But by the end of the three mile walk, I had let it go. We talked about parenting, we caught up on things, and came back feeling relaxed.

It worked so well that we did it for the next two nights, too.

Kids to bed, walk, quick shower, us to bed.

No more regrets about how we spend our evenings.

We’ve already planned another walk for tonight.

The only discouraging thing is that once it starts getting dark and cold again in the fall, it will be all but impossible to keep this up. I’m already trying to think about options – pushing through the dark and cold and going anyway? Only staying in when the sidewalks are blocked by ice and snow? But I know too well how easy it is to make declarations about the fall and winter only to sink into a puddle of sadness and despair when the light leaves and the cold, darkness returns. If you have any ideas, I’m listening.